I have just, with great reluctance, tendered my resignation as a director of Calon FM. It was not something I did lightly, as I love community broadcasting and there are many excellent people who work tirelessly as volunteers to support the station. However, the article written in Nation Cymru by Allan Longshadow, one of the station managers, makes my position completely untenable.
I appreciate the article in no way represents the views of the station, which has always been a delight to be part of, but I simply can’t allow myself to appear aligned with Longshadow’s version of the relationship, or any future such outburst. The inaccurate picture he paints is of a community station spurned by Wrexham AFC. In a sustained, remarkable and totally unwarranted attack on the club, he focusses on the parade through the city last week, concluding rather cutely that the station and others “have simply been thrown under the bus.”
It’s a great line. Shame it’s not true.
Before I go through the litany of inaccuracy and twisted truths in the article, I ought to provide a little context. I’ve been commentating on Wrexham AFC since the late 1980s, and began my association with Calon FM when they started broadcasting my commentaries on the club’s games, home and away, in 2017.
At that time, under the excellent stewardship of Katherine Wade and Amy Hughes, who ran an extremely tight ship, I revelled in the professionalism of a station which was an absolute pleasure to work with. They gave me that enthusiasm for community broadcasting I mentioned earlier.
While the commentaries eventually moved exclusively to the club’s own platform, a decision which I was disappointed by, but which was made by the previous owners, I picked up the responsibility for the weekly DragonHeart show which was created by the Wrexham Supporters Trust and broadcast weekly on Calon in 2020 when its excellent host, Kingsley Evans, stepped down.
When the station relaunched in 2021, I was invited to support the application for a broadcasting license and subsequently become a director of the company, and proudly accepted.
So, let’s take a look at what the article claims, and examine the veracity of Mr. Longshadow’s claims.
He claims that “Despite broadcasting the official Wrexham FC (sic) podcast, in two seasons they have never once been invited to set foot upon the hallowed turf of the Racecourse, AKA ‘the church’.”
Quite apart from the fact that I’ve not heard the ground referred to as “the church” in 45 years of support, and that “the official Wrexham FC podcast”, named “Final Whistle” was created by me in 2005 and is not featured on Calon, they most certainly have attended press events: I have represented the club at press conferences, and there was certainly a presenter present for the launch of the Stadium for the North campaign last June: a picture of him in front of the stand, with WREXHAM picked out in white seats in the background, is prominently featured at the top of the station’s website!
Also, anyone with the remotest notion of how journalism works will know that media outlets don’t sit around and wait for invitations: they go out and find the stories. Longshadow claims Calon has “asked, nay begged, to be part of this fairy-tale”. I’d be fascinated to see evidence of this, as I’ve not been made aware of any failed approaches by the station to the club. As a director with an obvious interest in that relationship, I’d expect to have been told should that have been the case.
In Longshadow’s view, though, Calon has been “utterly ghosted”.
I wonder if he felt “utterly ghosted” when he commented “I love my job is an understatement” on social media alongside a picture of himself on the Racecourse pitch last year, with broadcast equipment, at a press event?
I wonder if he considers Wrexham captain Ben Tozer’s exclusive appearance on a Calon FM show last month to also be part of Wrexham’s “ghosting” strategy? Mindset Mondays is the epitome of what community radio should be producing: smart, public interest programming which could genuinely make a positive difference to people’s lives. Having Tozer on such a show, in the midst of a round of appearances on national media as interest in the club mushroomed, was a hell of an exclusive, and brilliant, valuable broadcasting.
I wonder if the videos Wrexham players made in support of Calon’s application for a broadcast license were “ghosting” too?
I wonder if last season’s extremely open Q&A with board advisor Shaun Harvey, which was a DragonHeart exclusive on Calon FM, was “ghosting”? There will be a second Q&A with him in the near future, but sadly I’ll be looking for a new platform now.
Uncharacteristically, Longshadow’s claim that Calon were “refused the opportunity to broadcast matchday commentary” is accurate, if expressed rather pejoratively. After essentially shutting down and then relaunching, the station wasn’t broadcasting when the takeover was confirmed, or for the opening third of the 2021-22 season. I approached Wrexham AFC on behalf of the station in 2022 to ask if commentaries could return to Calon, but in anticipation of any future promotion to the EFL, the club wanted to concentrate its media on the EFL’s digital platform, in order to familiarise fans with it and ensure a smooth transition once promotion was secured. Again, I was disappointed but fully understood the logic of that decision: I think any reasonable person would.
He also complains that the station has never “spoken to the club’s owners.” Another truth out of context. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s public interviews have been carefully controlled. Even the club’s own media team has had limited face-to-face content. This isn’t because they are difficult, but because they are looking to maximise the impact of their public appearances for the benefit of the club.
Anyway, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Did Calon apply for press passes for the final game of the season, when the owners conducted interviews with media? The closest thing to a direct approach that I am aware of is a series of tweets which gratuitously tagged the owners, which I had to advise should be halted as it was a rather embarrassingly desperate way to attempt to form a relationship with them.
If there is an issue with the club, it’s hardly reflected in Calon’s social media presence. Retweets of Wrexham AFC material is a common feature of their output, and the current header image of their Twitter account is of the victory parade!
As for the claim that the parade was the latest example of Calon being “denied any opportunity to share in what…is likely to go down in the history books as the story of the century… Hardly a surprise, then, that nobody bothered to invite them to be part of the press coverage for the victory parade”, well, where do I start?
Firstly, the above story doesn’t suggest a lack of representation at the parade! Two members of Wrexham’s media team – Amy and me – were producing content at the parade which Calon used!
Secondly, do you have to wait for an invitation to report from a public parade? I made a video report from the pavement, which I’m proud to say has been consistently praised on social media as the best evocation of what it was like to be in the crowd for the occasion. What would stop Calon from using the cameras which were “gathering dust” to get out there and produce content with rather better equipment than the phone I had at my disposal?
Also, the notion of the station being shut out is made even more ludicrous because that footage was given its premier, in audio form, on Calon FM as part of Dragonheart, and then published online in DragonHeart’s name! That’s quite apart from the years of content, exclusive interviews and match highlights DragonHeart has premiered on Calon over the years. When the takeover was confirmed I produced a two-hour special, featuring many main players in the process and audio of Reynolds and McElhenney. That’s not exactly what I call “ghosting”!
The only media presence on the parade buses were the “Welcome to Wrexham” cameras and the club’s media team. No BBC, no ITV, no Sky, no TalkRadio, no print journalists. There were no post-event press conferences or interviews. None of those bodies felt offended and refused to cover the event!
It’s appropriate he should suggest “in the words of Tolkien – not all that glitters is gold.” If he’d checked his facts, he’d know that’s a quote from Shakespeare, but let’s be honest: that is far from the only fact-checking failure in this bizarre rant.
Longshadow claimed a local film company were mistreated, having been promised access to the parade. If this was true, it would be an excellent point. However, there were no places allocated to any production company, and decisions about which media were allowed onto the busses were made on the day of the parade.
If, as the article suggests, the relationship between Wrexham AFC and Calon FM is dysfunctional, I fear the blame lies with one side. Longshadow states in a strangely accusatory tone, “it might seem strange, that there is little mention of [the parade] on Wrexham City(sic)’s very own FM radio station, a community station that has broadcast from the heart of Wrexham for a decade and a half.” I agree; it’s very strange. However I’d have to ask him who puts stories on his website? If he wanted a story, all he had to do was pick up a laptop and type! This peculiar expectation for everything to be brought to the station on a plate isn’t terribly realistic.
“Anybody who has watched the documentary would be forgiven for not being aware the city has it’s (sic) own radio station, given their complete absence from the storyline”, complains Longshadow. Indeed, the station isn’t mentioned. How a station which has one hour of content on Wrexham AFC a week would force itself into the narrative is unclear: the local newspapers also don’t get a mention, and they’ve been part of the club’s stories for decades. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Calon weren’t even broadcasting for the first third of the 2021-22 season, which is the subject of the first series of “Welcome to Wrexham”.
Ironically, I’ve been interviewed on a few occasions by the show for season two, and mentioned the station to them regularly. After reading Longshadow’s article, I rather wish I hadn’t.
There’s clearly no agenda from the club around excluding community media: how could there be when the owners’ stated aims so clearly revolve around supporting local initiatives? Two other community stations are granted access to games and post-match press conferences. The difference between them and Calon is simple: they have approached the club and asked for it. The club is unaware of any direct requests from Calon beyond my own representations.
It saddens me, when the club’s owners have done remarkable things to raise the profile and self-confidence of a city which has suffered over the last few years, that a representative of the local community station should launch such an attack. To be so negative about a phenomenon which has lifted the region is an incredible misreading of the situation.
It’s appropriate he should suggest “in the words of Tolkien – not all that glitters is gold.” If he’d checked his facts, he’d know that’s a quote from Shakespeare, but let’s be honest: that is far from the only fact-checking failure in this bizarre rant.
Leave a Reply